Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Agriculture at the Metropolitan Edge Geography 298, Section 2 Week 2: Framing the Peri-Urban Interface and Feeding Cities Robert Eric Dickinson was raised and educated in England, mostly at Leeds. He wrote extensively on geography, and taught at Syracuse University in New York for 11 years. He returned to Leeds, but came back to America numerous times as a visiting professor at several different universities. Dickinson, Robert Eric. 1964. City and Region: A Geographical Interpretation. 554576. Lack of effective regional governments and inappropriate political boundaries results in malfunctioning metropolitan areas. Cities have grown “too large to offer the best conditions for human living”(559), so planning authorities are trying to encourage decentralization. Need regional authority for this. Regional economic development: locate industry on new, decentralized sites to provide employment to “surplus cultivators”(561). Locate small-scale industry in small towns. Farms “are transformed into residences or shops placed between the original farmsteads.” (564) Growth of big cities remains unchecked. “Planning for the future should aim at reducing the size of the great urban agglomeration, while improving and making more widely accessible the amenities of city civilization in town and country alike.” (566). Cities are too big and countryside too depopulated for either to properly provide services and amenities to their populations. Need a regional government to redistribute taxes, tax industry to increase revenue. Given that planning practice has been unable to stop or slow the growth of big cities, need to change tactics and accept “natural trends toward the increasing growth and expansion of urban regions.” (570). Create a hierarchy of small cities organized around a common “mother city”. Six stages of the growth of cities: Eopolis (village), Polis (city-state), Metropolis (mother city), Megalopolis (obsessed with bigness and power), Tyrannopolis (parasitic), Necropolis (selfdestruction). Currently at the stage of Megalopolis. Out of scale with human values and needs. “Megalopolis is growing through its own momentum faster than powers of public opinion can control it.” “Swollen bureaucracy.” “Little concern with social values.” (572). To avoid Necropolis, must work against trends that further Megalopolis. Reassert local ties. Restore local community life. Reassert schools as center of neighborhood life. “The vast megalopolitan mass should be replaced by self-contained urban communities.” Surround by greenbelt, locate near “mother city” for cultural needs. [See Ebenezer Howard.] Need general thinkers to guide this, not just specialists like architects, planners, engineers. Need people studying ekistics [the scientific study of human settlements]. Ebenezer Howard was raised in England, and spent several years in America as a young man. Influenced by Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson, he became concerned with improving quality of life. Upon his return to England, he worked as a record-keeper for Parliament, but also founded the Garden Cities Association in 1899, and Letchworth Garden City (45 miles north of London), was designed following the principles he laid out in Garden Cities of Tomorrow (originally published as To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform). Howard, Ebenezer. 1946. Garden Cities of To-morrow. 41-57, 138-150. “How to stem the drift from the country is one of the main problems of the day. The labourer may perhaps be restored to the land, but how will the country industries be restored to rural England?” (43). Reversing trend to move into “awful” overcrowded cities was great concern. Town magnet, country magnet, town-country magnet. “Marry” town and country to obtain advantages of both: human society, and beauty of nature. [One might say our modern suburbs seem to have the advantages of neither]. This would entice people back out of cities. Vision for “Garden City”, a 1000 acre town in the center of a 6000 acre estate, held in trust for all inhabitants of town. Grand boulevards mark out several districts. Central park at center. Housing shops in heart of town, industry at the outskirts. All surrounded by agricultural land. Individual initiative emphasized. Exercise Parliamentary powers to establish new towns. When a given town is built out, it will not build on its greenbelt/zone of country, but rather will establish a new community a small distance away, with its own zone of country, and connected by railways. Crowded cities are considered results of selfishness; a society concerned with the well-being of all its members would instead build Garden Cities. Howard feels it will be necessary to start over on fresh land rather than retrofit poorly built cities. Overcome opposition by dividing interests like ‘landowners’ into opposing camps who cancel out each other’s possible influence: city land gets cheaper, ag land gets more expensive, landowners will be divided in opinion, and land reform will thus be easier. David Simon is Professor of Development Geography at Royal Holloway University of London, and is Director of the Centre for Developing Areas Research. Duncan McGregor is Senior Lecturer in Geography at Royal Holloway University of London. Donald Thompson is Departmental Skills and IT Officer in Geography at Royal Holloway University of London. Simon, David, Duncan McGregor, and Donald Thompson. 2006. Contemporary Perspectives on the Peri-Urban Zones of Cities in Developing Areas. In The Peri-Urban Interface. 3-12. Simple dichotomy of ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ is becoming meaningless in developing areas [and in developed countries too!]. No neat dividing line; instead, large interface zone. Extended metropolitan region = EMR. Peri-urban interface = PUI. Several types of transition zones, from sprawl to growth corridors, slowly shading into ‘urban’. No good term for ‘peri-urban’ in much of the global south; linguistic differences can have an effect on thought patterns even when there is an equivalent term. “Changing international divisions of labour are producing new areas of rapid industrialization and economic development within or beyond existing metropolitan boundaries.” (7) [The phenomenon of the global supply region enriches some and impoverishes others] Peri-urban zones of experience the greatest ecological impacts in a given metropolitan area. PUI can be defined as an area with strong urban influence, access to markets, services, and labor, but limited land area and high pollution and urban growth risks. “no single definition will fit all circumstances and situations unless couched in broad and functional terms, rather than attempting to set discrete spatial limits.” (10). Better to think about a rural-urban gradient, with varying rates of change. Consider PUI to be part of city, not a separate area. This is made difficult by the lack of regional governments in many places. Lack of a ‘holistic planning’ tradition. Many local governmental units do not want to take responsibility for environmental impacts they cause outside their jurisdiction. Ian Douglas teaches in the School of Geography at the University of Manchester and is Chair of the Peri-Urban Environmental Change Project (PUECH). Douglas, Ian. 2006. Peri-Urban Ecosystems and Societies: Transitional Zones and Contrasting Values. In The Peri-Urban Interface. 18-29. “Peri-urban areas are the transition zone, or interaction zone, where urban and rural activities are juxtaposed, and landscape features are subject to rapid modifications, induced by human activities (18).” These zones are often neglected by both rural and urban administration, have both high value middle class properties and poor settlements, and have agricultural and industrial development. Degradation of ecological and human health often results from lack of proper planning and regulation in peri-urban areas (exploitation of resources, poor handling of waste, water and air pollution from industry, etc.). Frank Ellis is a professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of East Anglia and James Sumberg is the director of the New Economics Foundation and was trained as an agriculturalist. Both have taught about international agricultural issues. Ellis, Frank & James Sumberg. 1998. Food Production, Urban Areas and Policy Responses. World Development 26(2): 213-225. The author critically examines literature that represents farming in urban areas of developing countries as a way to ensure food security or poverty reduction, especially in regard to cities and towns in sub-Saharan Africa. The term “urban agriculture” needs further definition to understand what it includes (commercial, private, farming, gardening) in the matter of how it relates to poverty reduction and food security. He argues that social and economic interactions between rural and urban sectors are essential for understanding poverty and security because they create the reality that food production in an area does not equal food security among the population of that location (i.e. food gets shipped to wherever the growers will make the most money). D.J. Midmore is a professor at Central Queensland University in the school of Biological and Environmental Sciences. H.G.P. Jansen is a research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Midmore, D.J., & H.G.P. Jansen. 2003. Supplying vegetables to Asian cities: is there a case for peri-urban production? Food Policy 28:13-27. This paper examines the interplay between peri-urban vegetable producers and their changing production and marketing environments in Asia including income generation, labour use, management of land and water resources, waste management, and health and food safely. The author concludes that in the future peri-urban vegetable production will not be economically viable because of scarce land and labor resources unless alternative production technologies become available and the positive externalities generated by the agriculture become internalized. In addition to technological advances, integrated economic and environmental analysis and communication between peri-urban producers, the urban waste management sector, and municipal planners and consumers is necessary. Peter Houston is a Strategic Planner in the Development Planning and Policy Unit of the Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Division, Primary Industries and Resources South Australia. Houston, Peter. 2005. Re-Valuing the Fringe: Some Findings on the Value of Agricultural Production in Australia’s Peri-Urban Regions. Geographical Research 43(2):209-233. “Peri-urban regions are those superficially rural districts within the sphere of influence of adjacent urban centres,” especially the urban property market. Ideally, researchers would be able to define this spatial frame in terms of its connection to agricultural investment and development (i.e. based on the range of the urban price shadow or on farmland pressure and conversion), but this is currently considered too resource intensive. Peri-urban, as defined through journey-to-work data in Beyond the Suburbs, extends up to 100 km from the business district of each city, and most non-metropolitan growth in Australia has been concentrated at these commuting limits around major cities and coasts. However, the same study also found that a significant part of the labor force in peri-urban regions is self-contained. “Peri-urban regions, which comprise less than 3% of the land used for agriculture in the five mainland states, are responsible for almost 25% of total gross value of agricultural production.” Figures for peri-urban contributions to agriculture may be too low because (1) they tend to leave out smaller producers (2) they don’t account for sequential cropping on the same land (3) they are self-administered, so some producers are not counted at all. Thus, decision-makers should be aware that peri-urban regions contribute significantly to agricultural production but that these contributions are often under-reported in traditional accounting forms. As peri-urban land use is highly contested, this awareness is critical but has been absent from public policy deliberations. Peri-urban agriculture has not been dealt with thoroughly because (1) agriculture reporting and analysis is typically aspatial and (2) sectoralism dominates policy formation, and peri-urban agriculture sits between the sectors of urban development and large-scale agriculture. W.P. Hedden was Chief of the Bureau of Commerce for the Port of New York Authority. He coined the term ‘foodshed’. Hedden, W.P. 1929. Chapter II: Watersheds, Milksheds and Foodsheds. How Great Cities are Fed. 17-36. Comparable to a watershed, in which topography determines water flow into various basins, a foodshed describes the flow of food into consuming markets. “[T]he barriers which guide and control movement of foodstuffs are more often economic than physical,” and include railroad freight lines, protective tariffs, and inspection standards. In the early 19th century, large cities depended on nearby farms for their food, but that was beginning (in the early 20th century) to change, although some foodstuffs, such as milk and potatoes, were still predominantly produced locally. Freight rates were one of the most important factors in determining foodsheds, especially for foods that were bulky, cheap, and needed to be fresh but less so for high value commodities. Mileage-based freight rates favored local producers, while other kinds of tiered rates (especially for transcontinental transportation) sometimes favored long-distance shipping. Although thes rates were very important at the time, Hedden recognized that this system was beginning to break down with the introduction of long-distance trucking and continuous refrigeration that made it economical to ship foods long-distance. Other factors determining foodsheds were/are (1) tariffs (“economic dikes” that protect foodsheds from foreign competition) and (2) sanitary standards and embargoes Hedden predicted that (1) the future of foodsheds would depend on new kinds of transportation and on government policy (2) importation of food from other countries would decrease (3) that heavier foodstuffs would still come from nearby producers while high value goods would be without geographical limitation.